Empire - Expensive Sound
#183
May 18 1981
Empire
Expensive Sound
Genre: The Cutting Edge
3.75 out of 5
Highlights:
Empire
Hot Seat
Imagine discovering this record for the first time in 1981 and not knowing who to share it with. No one would be interested in this. None of your Billy Joel/Queen/Rush friends would know what to do with it. Mayyyyybe the Rush friends but it’s so outside the realm of what we were all listening to that I think they would have passed on it.
I think of My Bloody Valentine when I hear that opening track but then it explodes into the decidedly Power Pop/Emo sound of “Hot Seat” that I am just left confused. No one sounds like this and yet, in about 10 years everyone would.
Put these guys in a punkternative playlist that would include, I think, Killing Joke, MBV and even Supergrass. (I think. Someone correct me if this is way off, I get those confused with somebody else sometimes)
As with much of the music of 1981, it runs aground at some point and just can’t recover. That last track is just straight up metal. This album is so weird.
But so is 1981
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